I weighted around 246 lbs (112 kg) last year at the 4kFinals (which is end of February, (a calender month))So in summer I've started to go on a low carbohydrate diet (no sugars, grains, rice, potatoes; but higher amount of protein and fat)There where some astonishingly quick results, dropping like 3 pounds a week. Now I (still on low carb) stay leveled at 209 lbs (95 kg)keeping that wight since a couple of months. I like to get down to 195 lbs (89 kg), but it might take some time... seems the body has an equilibrium state.This would be a very good weight for me.

Anyhow, I really think there are 2 major culprits in the US (and also Europe) having a cause in the current obesity epidemic.The food/fast food companies, but even more the organisations promoting dietary guidelines (the food pyramid).

The current "western" diet is very much centered on fast growing agricultural products such as grains, corn, potato's and especially sugars.Everything gets pumped up with sugars or starches. -> all your typical supermarket convenience foods, just check the labels.Now even when people east less fat nowadays, the obesity level rise since the beginning of the 90s.

I don't think fat is the evil part here. Its the sugars and starches (and yes that include the potatoes, corn, rice and beers, not just candy, cake and cola)People cut out fat for 2 decades -> without much progress in weight reduction in general.In think bout it: did humans evolve as farmers or hunter gatherers? Did they eat potatoes or rather a mammoth?So maybe we live better on higher protein and fat -> and lower amounts of carbohydrates than today.

If a major union of dietitians is working based on the sponsorship of (junk)food companies, and defines guidelines like the food pyramid,maybe you need to rethink if you trust their "healthy" diet recommendations.

Anyhow. I think the thing anyone should do at least is to at kick out these sugar-laden softdrinks and buying more "real" and unprocessed food + preparing it at home.(called cooking, not ordering at Pizza Hut)And also to stay away from these "low fat" bogus products - since its loaded with sugars to keep a bit of taste.

Guys, dont pick out individual culpits for this problem. It's silly. It's simply there is MORE food than people need, its cheaply and easily accessible, especially the junk food stuff and thats it.Overall people just eat to much, exercise not enough or at all and there you go.

I tried low carb; I found it easy, and I felt really healthy and full of energy all the time. The rest of the family however had a lot of trouble kicking their addiction and I had to give in in the end because of them, not because of me. I might try it again this summer though.

I really think low carb is the perfect solution for like 50% of people (the ones with high insulin resistance, testable with a glucose response test)to go to their optimal weight.

As for diet coke: The problem is not the chemicals, but people being used to want more sugar (thus craving for junk food) when they taste something sweet.If you don't eat sweet / carb food, diet soft-drinks are fine.

FDA's Acceptable Daily Intake (ADI) of aspartame is 50 mg per kilogram of body weight or about 3,750 mg (21 cans of diet soda) for an adult weighing 75 kilograms (165 lb). ADI is the amount of substance (e.g., food additive) like aspartame that can be consumed daily over a lifetime without appreciable health risk to a person on the basis of all the known facts at the time of the evaluation.

Again, it's the habits. One who's drinking diet soda because of calories, shouldn't be drinking ANY soda at all. It's just an excuse to drink.Also it tastes bad and ra4king is a masochist

@RorkienWell Aspartame has more problems than the simple toxicity FDA talks about. It has been linked to a lot of things from blindness to lost of concentration. (your messing with a synthetic substance that goes directly into the central nervous system and stuff, which was created with a cheap sugar replacement in mind, not a healthy one :D)I would also not really drink HFCS, I like sugar but only real sugar. Luckily its not common at all in Europe.

Cancer isn't the only problem, but it is a huge one. The number of people dying from cancer rises each year. Which is obviously related to things we eat as in food/drinks or medication and stuff we breathe. Which becomes more and more toxic, as companies use cheaper and more questionable substances - but at a slow rate. And of course its very hard to say what really caused cancer in a specific person - its really long term. Making it hard to proof that many of these substances are indeed lethal in a long run.

Overall people just eat to much, exercise not enough or at all and there you go.

This is an oversimplification. Do you really believe all eating and all exercise is equivalent?

Have a look at leptin, or at how fiber changes how food is digested, or at how insulin levels affect how food is digested, for example. A calorie is not just a calorie, there is a lot going on. Many issues also around the feeling of satiety which is evoked more by some foods than others.

I think the biggest effect of exercise is that a body with more muscle consumes more calories during a 24-hr period (including resting periods). The exercise itself consumes less calories than one might think.

The social component (clusters) of obesity is very real. Good luck to you PrinceC! If you can stick with it, some of your relatives may follow suit.

Overall people just eat to much, exercise not enough or at all and there you go.

This is an oversimplification. Do you really believe all eating and all exercise is equivalent?A calorie is not just a calorie

I kinda stand by my opinion. Mass is energy. You wanna loose mass, eat less mass/energy. Count kcal intake, eat less.If you use 2700 kcal a day, eat 1500 each day, for 3 months, there you go.

I once lost 12 kg like that. I kinda find it childish when people avoid specific things... I mean you can eat everything want, just eat less energy than you are using. And eating just shit food for these reduced kcal is unhealthy and not recommended, but it ought to work too.

I think the biggest effect of exercise is that a body with more muscle consumes more calories during a 24-hr period (including resting periods). The exercise itself consumes less calories than one might think.

Absolutely. An untrained person could never double his kcal usage a day with exercise - but it has many more advantages, including better metabolism.

As a scientist I couldn't care less. Yes realistically there are social and even psychologically reason why you overeat or not loose weight, but thats not the point. You just have to get your shit together.

Cero - it's not quite as simple and cut and dried as that. Some people find it mysteriously easy to lose weight than others. It's likely that aspects of the modern diet are actually the root cause in the first place: the high availability of fructose, processed starches, glutens, lactose, and so on, all have subtle yet profound effects on our metabolism that a mere few thousand years of evolution just aren't fixing let alone a couple of generations.

I suspect the main issue facing Westerners today is massive overindulgence in trivially available processed carbohydrates causing very unusual patterns in glucose and fructose metabolism.

Anyway, do some proper research... look at the actual science. A lot of the time the actual science is seriously flawed.

For example, look at the vilification of salt in the diet for the last 30 years. It turns out the entire - and I mean entire - basis of "salt is bad" comes from a set of deeply, deeply flawed experiments that involved stuffing rats with half their own bodyweight in salt over the period of a few weeks and surprise surprise they got rather ill and died in a multitude of unpleasant ways.

"weight gain/loss = calories consumed - calories burned" does not work and is an oversimplification.

It sounds like "proper physics" at first, but treats metabolism like a simplestove.

First objection: eating chipped wood does not lead to weight gain (although there are lots of calories in it)

-> so first of all, one has to really know HOW MANY calories actually get absorbed, and how manypass though. And this can vary from person to person.

Also: this would mean dried poo would in no case ever burn (is testable).No actually there are calories going though in the poo, an also excreted in the pee.Not all of them count into the sum of available calories to the body!

Second objection: The level of resting metabolism - taking um the major part of the daily energy expenditure -will change dynamically.For example eating very little sends the body into a starvation mode. The resting metabolism sinks down.And this can actually lead to people having no weight loss at all or even gaining weight when eating less.

Third objection:

Fatcells (in the end the real annoyance, with weight beeing just an indicator for their volume) store fat only in thepresence of insulin.If there are a lot of nutrients in your body, but the insulin level is very low, the body will not store fat.

So if you have 2 meals with the same sum of consumable calories.One half sugar/half fat, the other purely fat. And have not eaten for several hours (like morning)I bet you, that eating the carb meal (eg: potato chips or french fries) will let you store much more fat than the pure fat meal (fried bacon).

When it comes down to it, it's mostly the balance of calories in versus calories out. I've ranged from 157lb through to about 220lb at various times. Currently around 175lb to 180lb, which is a bit too much. Part of the problem is people keep bringing cakes into work, although of course I'm not obliged to eat them. Personally I find it much easier to enforce a sensible diet by buying only sensible food in the supermarket. If there isn't any junk food in the house, then I can't possibly eat it. Still I'm going for a walk round the zoo and going dancing tonight, which will help.

This topic suddenly makes me think of the 'Fat Princess' game (on PS3). It's basically a capture-the-flag game, but the flag is a princess who has to be forcibly abducted. You have to gather food and feed her up to make her difficult to carry, so the enemy team have difficult in carrying her off. I wonder what other game plots we could do. Maybe a platform game where you collect cream cakes, but get fatter and slower as a side effect. Obviously your jumping distance goes down, but perhaps you are less easily dislodged when pelted with enemy missiles...

When it comes down to it, it's mostly the balance of calories in versus calories out.

This is only true if you take into consideration that the timing and content of these calories can make the 'calories out' vary quite a bit, and that the effects may not even appear for a considerable amount of time due to how the body is altered by those nutrients or fake foods (cf trans fat). Damocles previous post is a good intro to some of the variants.

Hey, I've got a game metaphor! True? False? Whether you win or lose it's "just a matter of the number of shots you shoot vs. the hits you take." Or are there generally ways to finesse the quality or timing of the shots taken or received depending on circumstances? (Aim for the head, heart, Achilles heel? Pound on masses of scaly armor? Shoot a flame thrower at a fire-impervious dragon?)

Of course it depends on the game. Food is like a very subtle strategy game. Can you eat in a way to maximize nutrient assimilation and minimize insulin surges? To minimize cravings which erode willpower points (used as "armor")?

Crude but obvious example: spread out over the course of a day one could have however many drinks of alcohol, or, one could only drink the same amount of alcohol in a single 2-minute segment of the same day. Same calories! Same day! Of course, one method could be quite enjoyable, and the other could lead to death by alcohol poisoning.

The science isn't settled, and there is active PR disinformation trying to convince people of "common sense" notions that are very misleading, just like there was with cigarettes and is now with global warming. This isn't an easy subject for getting to the truth of the matter. But given the stakes, it's worth devoting at least some time to research, and paying attention to who the sponsors are of what one is reading.

Welp, our PE teachers made us watch supersize me...that surgery scene was totally necessary The main problem is discipline(at least with Americans), that's why the test score are so low, no self-discipline/mastering of delay of gratification.

... comes from a set of deeply, deeply flawed experiments that involved stuffing rats with half their own bodyweight in salt over the period of a few weeks and surprise surprise they got rather ill and died in a multitude of unpleasant ways.

Sadly lots of research involves very broken methodology. It seems like lots of food testing is similar to what you described. You know what? If you drink too much pure water...you die.

There's a thing called science and a thing called common sense. Most "wisdom" about food and health habits that comes to people from science is mostly fragmented, misinterpreted, over-hyped and generally total nonsense. One year "science" tells us (e.g. through a health guru cherrypicking pseudoscience reports or a reporter making a sensational headline about a nuanced story) that this type of food is bad for us, the next year that it is good for us. Overall I'd argue that "science" in general is not that good a guideline to follow when it comes to your health.

A common sense rule such as "eat the right stuff and exercise more" is IMHO much more useful than "science". Eating less is not a good common sense advice: if you eat very little but all you eat is fat and sugar (not that uncommon) that is not healthy at all. Your body needs all kinds of things to work well. Instead pay attention to what you do eat: more fruit & veggies and less fat & sugar, and go running or to the gym. I generally find that people who maniacally apply "science" to their health habits just tend to cherrypick studies based on their obsession. And definitely be skeptic of "science" that goes against common sense.

There's a thing called science and a thing called common sense. Most "wisdom" about food and health habits that comes to people from science is mostly fragmented, misinterpreted, over-hyped and generally total nonsense.

What your are calling science is just PR and marketing, branding their communications as "scientific".

That is not science. One has to try and learn how to tell bogus PR from the real thing. Tossing out all science is giving in to the PR bastards.

There's a thing called science and a thing called common sense. Most "wisdom" about food and health habits that comes to people from science is mostly fragmented, misinterpreted, over-hyped and generally total nonsense.

What your are calling science is just PR and marketing, branding their communications as "scientific".

That is not science. One has to try and learn how to tell bogus PR from the real thing. Tossing out all science is giving in to the PR bastards.

Isn't most common sense based on careful observation and experimentation anyway?

"Common sense" is heavily influenced by cultural norms.And cultural norms are influenced by scientific studies and government recommendations.

For example, the notion that fat is bad and the main cause of weight gain was not "common sense" before the 1980s.Some methodologically bad studies and public administration recommendations have made fat look worse than it is.As a result the public wanted fat replacements -> which led to these "low fat" replacement foods.

Now they contain lots of sugar to keep the taste somehow acceptable.So now people avoid fat, but load up on sugar.

Funnily at the same time (since the 80s) people get fatter and fatter.Maybe this common sense to avoid fat but appreciate carbs is what causes people to get fatter?

It has been said that common sense is the collection of prejudices acquired by age eighteen (Einstein) and this does rather characterise it well as the almost exact opposite of Cartesian science. I'm just going back to avoiding all processed food - worked great for me - and walking the dog as often as I can.

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